Hackathon Sparks Bright Ideas and Innovation

This weekend 17 teams of Georgetown students and alumni competed during the university's first Hackathon for $5,000 by developing ideas for applications or other technology that could transform how the university community lives and learns.

Team Superhuman discusses its idea for developing a kind of electronic time capsule filled with what it means to be a student at Georgetown.

Georgetown's Chief Information Officer, Lisa Davis, center, advises a team as it works to develop its product and present it to the judges.

Team J-Town tries to come up with a way to aggregate data from the Center for Student Programs and alumni programs to create a more inclusive events calendar.

The teams return for a second day after working on their projects to deliver presentations to the judges.

Georgetown Provost Robert Groves, center, poses a question to one of the teams during a presentation from the judges table. He is joined by university leaders, including Chief Operations Officer Christopher Augostini, left, alumni and other business leaders.

The Gents team – from left Marshall Lifton, Kevin Tian, Innocent Ndubuisi-Obi, Robert Pongsajapan and Samuel Schneider (not shown) win the prize for their idea to create an online library of short video lectures at Georgetown for students to view and discuss as a group.

November 19, 2012– More than 100 students, alumni, faculty members and staff gathered at Georgetown Nov. 18-19 to design new products, processes or applications to transform how the university community lives and learns.

Students and alumni were divided into 17 teams over two days at the inaugural Hackathon event to develop new ways of aggregating information and sharing that information across multiple platforms.

Faculty and staff mentors and advisers helped the teams during their development processes before they were judged by senior university leadership and other business leaders for their creations.

The winners, The Gents team, received $5,000 for their idea to make an online library of short video lectures available to Georgetown students. The video lectures would feed a new network – called the Healy Circle – that would allow students to discuss topics of interest, find events and connect with their favorite professors.

Members of The Gents team included Marshall Lifton (B'16), Kevin Tian (B'16), Innocent Ndubuisi-Obi (SFS'16), Robert Pongsajapan (G'09) and Samuel Schneider (C'13).

Video presentations from the 17 teams will be posted later this month for the university community to vote on their favorite ideas.